Ed talks about different things companies can do to improve the chance that their press release will be picked up by bloggers. He immediately stresses that there is a big difference between a press release targeted towards regular news media and one targeted towards bloggers. He suggests a more complete release, while still keeping it short and concise, by including links to references and all other information regarding the release. To provide good contact information is also important, because many bloggers might want to ask questions about the release to make their post more unique.
This last statement feels like is underlines a very important difference between conventional news media and bloggers. While a newspaper might just post a summary of the press release with some minor comments, or simply post the entire press release and be satisfied with that, a blogger goes a couple of steps further. In most of the good blogs I’ve read, the person/persons blogging are first of all genuinely interested in the area that the blog concerns. This is what makes them dig deeper and perhaps not be satisfied with just a press release. This is at the same time the same quality that makes blogs so popular to read.
Ed also suggests that companies should have a dedicated part of their website for press releases and that they should provide all the information that the bloggers might need to write and interesting post. This includes things like company history, technical information, client quotes and maybe most important, pictures. A blogger interested in writing about you or one of your products should never have to hunt for a good picture of the product or for example the company logo.
I very much like this suggestion, mostly because it’s such and easy thing to do. I think it’s fair to assume that all serious companies today already have a website and to include a new page with information and pictures does not require allot of work, especially when all the content already exists.
Finally, Ed ergs companies to not focus all their energy on the A-list bloggers with the motivation that the smaller bloggers still have big audiences, they might be more narrow focused and thus you reach a larger number of model customers. He also points out a flaw in the way we measure pages popularity with for example PageRank. It is very possible that a sites “visitors” only subscribe to the RSS feed and don’t actually visit the site.
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3 comments:
While I don't think news papers just publish unedited press releases I really do agree with you on the difference in quality that the passion and genuine interest that bloggers generally possess generates, and promoting the enthusiasts' interest in your products seems like a very smart idea from the company perspective considering the popularity of blogs.
So in short: I think a kind of open press site that you mentioned would be very effective in creating blog traffic (given that the bloggers actually find it).
Then again, perhaps the bloggers actually want the personal relationship with the PR people, so that they feel priveleged being contacted. They may be put off if too much is automated. I think there might be some kind of balance act in there where at one point you will end up no longer communicating with blogs but traditional media.
I agree with what you two said. Press releases and blog have different character each other. Press releases contains expansive review of a topic and blog contains more detail information. And blog also has linking system that people can move site to site.
Filip and Patrik wrote good comment that I totally agree with.
I don't have anything to say.
Yeap. Nowadays, companies hold "blogger conference" separately from "press conference." For example, in the Korean presidential election earlier this year, some of the major candidates had blogger conferences. Press release really becomes direct to consumer marketing tool, which is quite different from old days.
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